You Look Ravilious Today, Darling!

One of the great sadnesses of not being able to go to Japan this autumn is that I have missed the 10th Anniversary Madoka Magica Exhibition... Luckily there is this report at least, but how I wish I'd been there!

Even the pictures are useful, of course. I hadn't realised how much the shot of Madoka cradling Homura was modelled on a pieta until I saw it as a cardboard cutout, for example:



Anyway, instead I went to Devizes today, and the Wiltshire Museum, there to see the Eric Ravilious exhibition, 'Downland Man.' No one else has ever quite captured the chalkland like Ravilious - I highly recommend this exhibition if you're in striking distance. His white horses are wonderful, of course, as is Beachy Head, and overall there's something about his slightly bleached, mystical, yet tough-minded modernism that appeals to me very strongly - and I'm not alone. Driving there, I saw the sunshine strike the cupped hills outside Calne, and thought I was looking directly at a Ravilious painting. The best artists can change the landscape in that way.

Meanwhile, up an alley in Devizes, there's this hat shop. Sophie Hatter, anyone?